Paolo Uccello, born Paolo di Dono, was an Italian painter and mathematician who was notable for his pioneering work on visual perspective in art. In his book Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects, Giorgio Vasari wrote that Uccello was obsessed by his interest in perspective and would stay up all night in his study trying to grasp the exact vanishing point. Uccello used perspective to create a feeling of depth in his paintings. His best known works are the three paintings representing the battle of San Romano, which were wrongly entitled the Battle of Sant'Egidio of 1416 for a long period of time.
The Uffizi Gallery is a prominent art museum located adjacent to the Piazza della Signoria in the Historic Centre of Florence in the region of Tuscany, Italy. One of the most important Italian museums and the most visited, it is also one of the largest and best-known in the world and holds a collection of priceless works, particularly from the period of the Italian Renaissance.
Piero della Francesca was an Italian painter of the early Renaissance. To contemporaries he was also known as a mathematician and geometer. Nowadays Piero della Francesca is chiefly appreciated for his art. His painting is characterized by its serene humanism, its use of geometric forms and perspective. His most famous work is the cycle of frescoes The History of the True Cross in the church of San Francesco in the Tuscan town of Arezzo.
Urbino is a comune (municipality) in the Italian region of Marche, southwest of Pesaro, a World Heritage Site notable for a remarkable historical legacy of independent Renaissance culture, especially under the patronage of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino from 1444 to 1482.
Federico da Montefeltro, also known as Federico III da Montefeltro KG, was one of the most successful mercenary captains (condottieri) of the Italian Renaissance, and lord of Urbino from 1444 until his death. A renowned intellectual humanist and civil leader in Urbino on top of his impeccable reputation for martial skill and honour, he commissioned the construction of a great library, perhaps the largest of Italy after the Vatican, with his own team of scribes in his scriptorium, and assembled around him a large humanistic court in the Ducal Palace, Urbino, designed by Luciano Laurana and Francesco di Giorgio Martini.
Luciano Laurana was a Dalmatian Italian architect and engineer from the historic Vrana settlement near the town of Zadar in Dalmatia, After education by his father Martin in Vrana settlement, he worked mostly in Italy during the late 15th century. He was principal designer of the Palazzo Ducale of Urbino and one of the main figures in 15th-century Italian architecture. He considerably influenced the development of Renaissance architecture. His projects were accompanied with notes in the Croatian glagolitic script, as witnessed by the famous Bernardo Baldi. He was a relative of the sculptor Francesco Laurana.
Gubbio is an Italian town and comune in the far northeastern part of the Italian province of Perugia (Umbria). It is located on the lowest slope of Mt. Ingino, a small mountain of the Apennines.
Justus van Gent or Joos van Wassenhove was an Early Netherlandish painter, perhaps from Ghent, who after training and working in Flanders later moved to Italy where he worked for Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, and was known as Giusto da Guanto, or in modern Italian Giusto di Gand etc. The artist is known for his religious compositions executed in the early Netherlandish idiom and a series of portraits of famous men, which show the influence of early Italian Renaissance painting.
Giovanni Santi was an Italian painter and decorator, father of Raphael. He was born in 1435 at Colbordolo in the Duchy of Urbino. He studied under Piero della Francesca and was influenced by Fiorenzo di Lorenzo. He was court painter to the Duke of Urbino and painted several altarpieces. He died in Urbino.
Oddantonio da Montefeltro was the first duke of Urbino in Italy.
The Madonna di Senigallia is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, finished around 1474. It is housed in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, in the Ducal Palace of Urbino.
Livia della Rovere was an Italian noblewoman of the House of della Rovere and the last Duchess of Urbino (1599–1631).
The Flagellation of Christ is a painting by Piero della Francesca in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, Italy. Called by one writer an "enigmatic little painting," the composition is complex and unusual, and its iconography has been the subject of widely differing theories. Kenneth Clark called The Flagellation "the greatest small painting in the world".
The Portrait of Federico da Montefeltro and His Son Guidobaldo is a painting dating from c. 1475 and housed in the Galleria nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, Italy. There is no consensus on the attribution of the authorship of the painting. The Flemish painter Justus van Gent and the Spanish painter Pedro Berruguete are the main contenders for the honour as both painters are believed to have been working in Urbino at the time the painting was made. The painting is part of a series of 28 portrait paintings of 'uomini famosi' made for the study of Duke of Urbino Federico da Montefeltro.
The Ideal City is the title given to three strikingly similar Italian Renaissance paintings of unresolved attribution. Being kept at three different places they are most commonly referred to by their location: The Ideal city of Urbino, Baltimore, and Berlin. Hubert Damisch, who has written at length about the paintings, refers to them as the "Urbino perspectives" or "panels". The three paintings are dated to the late 15th century and most probably they have different authors but various attributions have been advanced for each without any consensus. There is also a discussion about the purpose of the paintings as they are all in an unusual elongated format. In 2012 the Baltimore and Urbino panels were shown at a joint exhibition, with the Berlin painting being represented by a copy, as the original is too fragile to be shipped abroad.
Mario Salmi was an Italian art historian and art critic who specialized in Romanesque architecture, Tuscan sculpture and the early Italian Renaissance.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art has on display a complete studio from the Palazzo ducale di Gubbio. Consisting of period woodwork from late 15th century Italy, the studio was commissioned for Federico da Montefeltro.
The Miracle of the Desecrated Host is a six-panel tempera-on-panel predella by Paolo Uccello, painted between 1467 and 1469 for the Confraternity of the Corpus Domini and their oratory in the Corpus Domini church in Urbino. The predella was completed before van Wassenhove's work and Uccello received his last payment on 17 October 1469 and the rules made by folio 38r.
The Institution of the Eucharist or Communion of the Apostles is a 1472–1474 tempera on panel painting by Justus van Gent. Commissioned as an altarpiece, it post-dates its 1460s predella, The Miracle of the Desecrated Host by Paolo Uccello. Both Institution and Miracle are now in the Galleria nazionale delle Marche in Urbino.
The Renaissance in Urbino was one of the most fundamental manifestations of the early Italian Renaissance.
